MODULAR VEHICLES Concept/Discussion Thread (condensed/updated)

[FlimFlamm 509]

Modular constructable vehicles are a pretty big can of worms for DayZ. Currently we are all restricted to which ever prefabricated vehicles which the developers are adding in, and our ownly way of experiencing them in game will be to find them via luck. In the old dayz, admins of individual servers would hoard the few existing vehicles all to themselves, and if they didn't then the most powerful groups at large would. Actually getting a vehicle was a rare occurance and it generally didn't last very long. Modular vehicles can not only adress this limited access problem without flooding servers with tons of vehicles, but they can deliver on the promise of customizability and synamic gameplay that the devs so loftily spoke of so long ago.

 

A basic system would consists of parts, tools, and raw materials like metal and wood (wood being already in the game). Built on a chassis of varying sizes (small medium and large), different parts, like engines of different sizes or tires of different types, will impact the behavior and performance of the final vehicle. Passenger and cargo capacity will depend on chassis size, while things like handling and top speed depending on engine size, overall weight, and tire type. The end goal is to create an indepth, challenging, and laborious process for survivors to embark on, which in the end will produce an endless amount of dynamic gameplay while resulting in meaningful rewards for harworking and successful survivors in the form of completely customizable vehicles of diverse utility.

 

Here is a description of the main elements and how they might work in such a system:

 

 

 

World Objects:

• Chassis
  The chassis of a vehicle is the undercarriage that holds everything together and provides structural support. The bigger a chassis is, the more room it will have for bigger engines, more seats, more cargo, and potentially MG mounts. Chassis can easily be added into chernarus as an object or as a contstructable object from raw materials and tools such as scrap metal and a welder or a drill and bolts. A good example of passenger limits based on chassis size would be 1-2 persons for a small chassis, 1-4 for a medium, and 1-6 for a large chassis.

• Engine
  The engine of modular vehicle, as with all vehicles, will be what determines top speed. In conjunction with the overall weight of a modular vehicle which is calculated from the various parts, the engine will also determine the accelleration of the vehicle. In order to prevent players server hopping to more easily create modular vehicles, engines (also chassis and other parts) can require a special mechanic to be transported which can inherently prevent server transfers, such as dragging or a small constructable trolley. Aditionally whatever engine maintenance exists in prefab vehicles can also be applied to the engines of modular vehicles.

• Fuel tank
  A fuel tank is an essential part of any gas powered vehicle. If a fuel tank is too big for a particular chassis then it cannot be installed. Smaller fuel tanks can be installed on larger chassis but the larger more rare fuel tanks would be more desirable.

• Wheels
  Several types of wheels should be available to find in Chernarus, with different types bringing different performance options for players to choose from. Tractor tires will give the best offroad traction and performance while car tires will give on road performance at the expense of offroad. A third type of road only tire could also be available, with very high on road performance but very poor performance off road.

• Seating/Controls
  Certain peripherals like seats, steering wheels, and foot pedals can be a simplified process involving various tools and the appropriate resources like wood or scrap metal. The number of seats that can be added should reflect the size of the chassis and the amount of space left over after the engine, cargo and everything else is installed.

• Siding/Armor
  Siding and armor should be constructable from metal, wood, and perhaps canvas, and require the relevant tools and resources to construct and install. Heavier harder to make metal siding would be heavy but bullet proof. Wood siding would be cheaper, lighter, semi bullet proof, and cover from prying eyes. Canvas could also be used to provide cover from observers but would not be bullet proof at all. As opposed to the option of driving with no siding at all (siding is not necessary) siding gives you the potential for armor, cover, a paintable/dyeable surface to further customize, and perhaps also some protection from the wind and cold and rain.

• Cargo hold
  The cargo hold or bin on a modular makeshift vehicle in this type of system can easily be made out of wood or metal. Wooden bins are cheaper to make but are not bulletproof like metal ones, meaning if your vehicle gets shot in the cargo area a wooden bin will allow cargo to be damaged, while metal will deflect low caliber bullets. Cargo bins of greater size allow for more storage but they take up more space on the chassis which allows for fewer seats and a smaller engine. Cargo could be constructable directly from their raw resource form (wood or metal) and be installed directly onto a chassis, eliminating them as something you need to find or an in game object that must be coded for.

• Gunnery Atattchments
  If DayZ winds up going in the direction of having any kind of armed vehicles, then modular vehicles can remain relevant with gun mount attatchments being constructable from scrap metal and appropriate guns mounted upon them. This could be something only available to large chassis, for realism and balance reasons, and they would also potentially obstruct a great deal of potential seating space.

• Tools
  Various tools and other necessities can be added in as appropriate to make the system feel as authentic as possible, but also to provide additional difficulty and balance to the process. I mentioned a constructable trolley earlier, a pushable or pullable transportation device (like a wheel barrow), which could come to serve many more functions than just engine and chassis transportation.

 

 

Coding Mechanic/Animation Requirements:

• Part Construction Code/Animation
  The code and animations required for constructing various parts from raw resources like seats from metal can be a very simple thing, involving metal and the appropriate tool and a simple time consuming operation akin to the other crafting sequences. Things like welding fuel or generators to provide electricity can also be added in to go with these processes, and like the trolley, can serve and integrate with many other features like base lighting.

• Part Transportation Code/Animation
  The necessary animations and code required for moving around and manipulating large parts like engines and chassis can be a fairly simple task, accomplished with the aforementioned trolley and the simple accompanying animations that involve pushing or pulling objects around. It should also be possible to transport large parts in appropriately sized vehicles, giving a very distinct advantage to people with transportation large enough to assist with the construction or more vehicles (it will be the same way with constructing bases and transporting raw resources)

• Part Assembly Code/Animation
  Like part construction and part manipulation, the actual assembly of parts can be a fairly simple enough looking process with the animations being basic and easy to implement with the relevant tools, parts, and resources at hand. Once parts are being assembled onto a chassis it should become immobile until completely assembled ( or at least a rolling chassis, meaning wheels, chassis, engine, and drivers seat at the minmum). To give vehicles additional versatility, it could be made possible to tow other vehicles if the towing vehicle is strong enough. If this is the case then chassis with wheels should be towable, and also have the option of cargo bins immediately being installed on them in order to create a towable cargo trailer.

• Final Vehicle Performance Code/Animation
  Every piece of the vehicle that players need to assemble will have different weight characteristics and ingame behaviour. Bigger engines will mean more strength, but bigger chassis and more cargo and more metal means more weight, which in the end will affect vehicle acceleration. Increased weight in conjunction with tires will determine braking speed based on momentum and traction and also determine incline climbing strength. There is no end to how well the actual performance modularity system can be tweaked, but so long as generally top speed and acceleration are realistic it will be a passable approximation. Things like metal being bullet proof are a given, but more subtle things like wood giving more protection from the wind and cold than canvas or no siding are even more subtle elements that can make modular vehicle variants even more unique.

Pros:

• Improved/Supplemental Vehicle Access

  Instead of relying solely on prefab vehicles as access to transportation, the ability of players to construct their own transport will make it so that vehicles cannot be totally monopolized on individual servers without needing to flood the server with prefab vehicles and thereby make them easy to acquire. With this system there can be more potential vehicles on well populated servers, but players still need to put the work in to actually construct and maintain them as opposed to competing with admins and large clans for access to the few prefab vehicles.

• Economy/Server Controls

  Individual servers could easily be able to control the number of engines that spawn, which would be a critical factor with which to modulate the difficulty of building a vehicle and also control the total possible number of modular vehicles. Critical vehicle parts like engines can be made so heavy that players cannot transport them on their person, making them incapable of being transported from server to server, which addresses the constant possible problem of server hoppiong for easy parts

• Customizability

  Each vehicle that is produced can be unique in many ways. Player capacity, cargo capacity, armoring, top speed, acceleration, handling, painting and coloring,  and more can all be made dependant on the type and weight of parts that a given vehicle is constructed from. Putting together a vehicle entirely from parts that you yourself have gathered or constructed and customized or tailored will feel much more like your own property and in general be much more rewarding than prefab vehicles

• Content

  The process of building and upgrading your own modular vehicle can be an incredibly long and never ending one with a vast learning curve and endless complexity and difficulty. Once survivors actually put something together, they could then spend and endless amount of time driving around and looking for better parts to upgrade their vehicle with. It gives players something to for a potentially endless amount of time and enhances the 'end game' in a dynamic way.  The peripheral elements of a modular vehicle construction system can fit seamlessly into a basebuilding system and the existing vehicle maintanance system.

• Developmental Efficiency

  One of the biggest limitations in developing a game is time and how much of it you invest in one particular aspect of the game at the expense of detail and content in other aspects. When it comes to a modular vehicle system, the modeling is time saving because all of the possible end vehicles share the models and code of their base components. Tools and raw materials are things which can serve other functions, particularily in basebuilding, and therefore be more versatile, content generating, and timesaving from a programming perspective. As it stands the devs are slowly modeling and coding vehicles one by one, and I imagine much of the coding for them will be unique. Modular vehicles will be a way to implement a great number of vehicle variations which serve diverse functions and therefore cover more ground with less work. The unique mechanics that tis system woul call for would also be an excellent starting point for the modding community to expland upon when the time comes.

Cons:

• Realism/Authenticity

  The only major con that seems to be apparant by some of the responses is the notion that regular survivors would not have the adequate mechanical skill to build their own vehicle or that not dying should be so difficult that constructing a vehicle is a logistical impossibility. My response to this is that survivors currently know how to do all kinds of things that the average person doesn't, like operating firearms, trapping, and medical tasks. In the end this objection comes down to a matter of vision and of taste and a of opinion. I for one do not think this is an issue at all, most people do not seem to think so either.

 

 

The addition of constructable customizable vehicles would bring an end to the age old vehicle monopoly, and add a much needed touch of content, variety, and personality to DayZ. The vision I have for this particular system does not involve replacing prefab vehicles, but instead existing alongside of them and absorbing and sharing many of the same maintenance mechanics that exist for prefab vehicles. Prefabricated vehicles should naturally be superior in various ways to modular vehicles so as to not become obsolete. The V3S will always be able to hold more people or cargo than a player constructed vehicle for example, or a street car with a powerful engine will always be faster than a constructed one. This way the value of real vehicles will still actually surpass player constructed ones and be more desirable, but the inevitable problem of hoarding will be completely countered with supplemental vehicle access. In the end we will all have more things to do and wind up with a diverse array of useful vehicles!

 

Happy Zombie Apocalypse everyone!

 

Edited April 16, 2015 by FlimFlamm

[FlimFlamm 509]

I was really hoping for some feedback and discussion, perhaps the post is too monstrous :( .

 

I think that the ability to get your own vehicle is an incredibly important and impactful change that needs to be made to DayZ. I am dying to know what the developers are planning and whether or not we are going to have to wait for modding to get all the cool stuff...

[AP_Norris 1018]

I would like modification to not be exclusive to this one kind of vehicle. I think realistically it would be easier to repair than build from scratch too. Wheels are a definite modification I would like to see, survivors may prefer to stick to the roads and achieve greater speeds and fuel efficiency or they may like to outfit themselves with tires suited for travelling off roads.

 

Armouring, should require a bit of looking around to find decent pieces of armour, also consideration to the load bearing parts of the vehicle. however they could come in other forms like wire over the windows to protect from zombies.

 

Extra cargo could be strapping bags and trolleys to a vehicle, finding trailers which should affect acceleration, climbing, top speed, and fuel efficiency.

 

This is just my opinion though, I feel they do need some form of vehicle modification.

[ImageCtrl 719]

I think realistically it would be easier to repair than build from scratch too.

So be it.

Edited April 14, 2015 by NoCheats

[Mos1ey 6301]

Somewhat inauthentic IMO. Realistically someone with mechnical knowledge would be more likely to repair one of the many wrecked cars that are lying around Chernarus than build something from scratch.

 

Would love the ability to "upgrade" vehicles by way of reinforcement to make them more apocalypse friendly though.

Edited April 14, 2015 by Mos1ey

[FlimFlamm 509]

Somewhat inauthentic IMO. Realistically someone with mechnical knowledge would be more likely to repair one of the many wrecked cars that are lying around Chernarus than build something from scratch.

 

Would love the ability to "upgrade" vehicles by way of reinforcement to make them more apocalypse friendly though.

 

Given that the land surrounding Chernarus is filled with radiation, it is reasonable to assume that nukes went off.

 

Perhaps the EMP blast from the nukes is what made 99% of Chernarus cars break and become useless junk. If this is the case then building your own vehicle from a working engine might be your only option!. (authenticity is aesthetics)

 

I'm fine with the idea of finding vehicles that must be repaired, but there is a major flaw in this system. If there are very few vehicles available, then most players will not get the chance to experience them at all. Groups will hoard them and hide them, and in order to make them actually findable servers will need to increase their numbers drastically, which would then work against authenticity and difficulty of the game by making them too easy to get and therefore under-appreciated.

 

Players should still have the chance to find and repair full vehicles, and these vehicles should be pretty decent. Modular vehicles (yes at the expense of some petty forms of realism,feasibility. authenticity) would exist along side these regular vehicles and provide supplemental access to them.

 

Players who luck out and find them still get the same experience the devs say they want (really rare vehicles), but if you cannot find them or they are all hoarded up, then modular vehicles will give you a chance, via appropriate effort, to get your hands on a vehicle that will be inherently inferior (in most respects) to a factory made vehicle like a V3S.

 

Modular vehicles will be mostly shitty in terms of cargo, armor, passenger capacity and speed. The main purpose would be to outrun zombies, and as per realism, only the most difficult to complete modular vehicles (with the best wheels, engines, and chassis,) should be able to travel at comparable speeds.

 

There is a very wide middle ground where modular vehicles might find purchase in DayZ. The mechanic of supplemental access to vehicles while keeping them difficult to get completely solves the vehicle rarity problem while adding content and extending the end game.

 

The most common argument against modular vehicles that people have raised is the 'authenticity' issue. Mos1ey above writes "someone with mechnical knowledge would be more likely to repair one of the many wrecked cars that are lying around Chernarus than build something from scratch". To this I say that the wrecked cars are wrecked. It's really not unfeasible at all to harvest from these many wrecked cars the parts required to build for yourself small manageable transportation. The benefit to gameplay/mechanics is so perfect that the relatively small sacrifice to our own biased notions of authenticity isn't really enough to shut the idea down.

Edited April 14, 2015 by FlimFlamm

[FlimFlamm 509]

I'm going to try and start condensing this concept, while refining it, into easy to digest sized pieces of information. A brief description, a parts list, and a pros and cons list... Here is a pros and cons list that I have been slowly adding to (yes it is quite biased, something which I need targeted criticism to improve)

 

Pros:

Supplemental access to vehicles without making them common or easy to get. Instead of servers jacking the vehicle numbers to make them available to players, this system allows the total number of vehicles (not including regular spawned ones, which will also exist) to reflect the amount of time and effort that the given population is or has been willing to put into them.

 

Server/global economy control of parts, engines cannot be transferred to other servers, which gives servers individual control to limit how many modular vehicles can exist.

 

Complete customization. Inherent in the concept is the fact that every player build vehicle will be completely modular and therefore extremely unique.

 

Variety and diversity of transportation. Having only a few of the same vehicle models isn't exciting. With modular vehicles, ability and performance depends on what it is made out of, with better/stronger parts being harder to get and more rare to find which naturally widens the versatility and utility that modular vehicles can come to serve.

 

Complexity/Difficulty. This system adds difficulty to the game, and complexity. More tools, more uses, more difficult and complex processes, more rewarding; more fun. Building your own vehicle is more difficult and complex than repairing one that you find, and endlessly more rewarding.

 

Developmental time-saver. Rather coding and modeling for a bunch of unique vehicles (good luck making them modular or customizable at that point) like the V3S and the other incoming vehicles, Devs would simply need to code and model a relatively low number of relatively small and simple individual parts. Then they simply need to program the way they fit together and create modular vehicles. The end result is a massive increase in content compared to the same amount of developmental work.

Cons:

Realism: some players feel survival should be too difficult to have the spare time or safety to work on a homemade vehicle

 

Authenticity: Some players feel that the mechanical knowledge required should be presumed lacking and therefore modular vehicles should be disallowed as a matter of fidelity to 'authenticity'

Edited April 14, 2015 by FlimFlamm

[Caboose187 (DayZ) 3036]

Uh, where'd you get this information that Chernarus or the land surrounding it is filled with radiation?  DayZ is not a post apocalyptic nuclear era.  This is not fallout

[FlimFlamm 509]

Uh, where'd you get this information that Chernarus or the land surrounding it is filled with radiation?  DayZ is not a post apocalyptic nuclear era.  This is not fallout

 

Inthe mod if ou went out of the bounds of the map, all you would find is wasteland and the soothing tick of a geiger counter. the story goes that when the zombie apocalypse broke out world powers nuked the most fucked areas to try and save the rest.

 

This is all pretty standard mod lore.

[FlimFlamm 509]

I completly re-wrote the OP in order to be more readable.

 

I am also looking for images of ghetto looking makeshift vehicles that would fit the description of the OP (So I can include them as visuals).

 

As always any input is appreciated!

[Mos1ey 6301]

Given that the land surrounding Chernarus is filled with radiation, it is reasonable to assume that nukes went off.

 

Perhaps the EMP blast from the nukes is what made 99% of Chernarus cars break and become useless junk. If this is the case then building your own vehicle from a working engine might be your only option!. (authenticity is aesthetics)

 

I'm fine with the idea of finding vehicles that must be repaired, but there is a major flaw in this system. If there are very few vehicles available, then most players will not get the chance to experience them at all. Groups will hoard them and hide them, and in order to make them actually findable servers will need to increase their numbers drastically, which would then work against authenticity and difficulty of the game by making them too easy to get and therefore under-appreciated.

 

Players should still have the chance to find and repair full vehicles, and these vehicles should be pretty decent. Modular vehicles (yes at the expense of some petty forms of realism,feasibility. authenticity) would exist along side these regular vehicles and provide supplemental access to them.

 

Players who luck out and find them still get the same experience the devs say they want (really rare vehicles), but if you cannot find them or they are all hoarded up, then modular vehicles will give you a chance, via appropriate effort, to get your hands on a vehicle that will be inherently inferior (in most respects) to a factory made vehicle like a V3S.

 

Modular vehicles will be mostly shitty in terms of cargo, armor, passenger capacity and speed. The main purpose would be to outrun zombies, and as per realism, only the most difficult to complete modular vehicles (with the best wheels, engines, and chassis,) should be able to travel at comparable speeds.

 

There is a very wide middle ground where modular vehicles might find purchase in DayZ. The mechanic of supplemental access to vehicles while keeping them difficult to get completely solves the vehicle rarity problem while adding content and extending the end game.

 

The most common argument against modular vehicles that people have raised is the 'authenticity' issue. Mos1ey above writes "someone with mechnical knowledge would be more likely to repair one of the many wrecked cars that are lying around Chernarus than build something from scratch". To this I say that the wrecked cars are wrecked. It's really not unfeasible at all to harvest from these many wrecked cars the parts required to build for yourself small manageable transportation. The benefit to gameplay/mechanics is so perfect that the relatively small sacrifice to our own biased notions of authenticity isn't really enough to shut the idea down.

 

Regardless, the chassis and other parts would remain useable even if the engine must be repaired or replaced.

Another issue that having a lot of vehicles in Chernarus creates is that the apparent abundance of fuel would also be inauthentic IMO.

Vehicles were never hard to find in DayZ, they're quite big and difficult to hide. You just have to know where to look. ;-)

 

Inthe mod if ou went out of the bounds of the map, all you would find is wasteland and the soothing tick of a geiger counter. the story goes that when the zombie apocalypse broke out world powers nuked the most fucked areas to try and save the rest.

 

This is all pretty standard mod lore.

 

I don't think that was the official DayZ mod. You could go miles out into the debug plains in DayZ.

Edited April 16, 2015 by Mos1ey

[B4GEL 175]

I feel that vehicle modification this extensive isn't necessary for vanilla DayZ, doesn't really fit the theme as others have mentioned.

 

I wouldn't complain if they did decide to go this far, however it would work far better as part of a Mad Max 2 style mod on a larger desert map with a bigger focus on vehicles and fights over fuel sources like oil wells and crashed tanker trucks. 

[FlimFlamm 509]

Regardless, the chassis and other parts would remain useable even if the engine must be repaired or replaced.

Another issue that having a lot of vehicles in Chernarus creates is that the apparent abundance of fuel would also be inauthentic IMO.

Vehicles were never hard to find in DayZ, they're quite big and difficult to hide. You just have to know where to look. ;-)

 One of the good things about this system is that it gives players access to vehicles without directly increasing the number of them or making them easy to get. Players will have to assemble their vehicles laboriously from parts which means that only the most populated servers would see significant increases in vehicle numbers. In order to control the upper limit the number of engines that exist per server can be regulated by individual servers.

 

Fuel is an important commodity I understand that, but the only way map related fuel limits would become an issue of authenticity is if there were hundreds of vehicles accross a map. Not only would servers be individually able to limit the number of vehicles, but as morevehicles get constructed parts become more rare and so this creates a soft cap for the upper limit of vehicle numbers.

 

I've played a ridiculous amount of DayZ, and I can tell you that very few vehicles creates a game where you live and die on foot with little to no hope of getting wheels. Having constructable vehicles will give survivors something to do other than hunting for player and admin bases to steal a ride and be a fundamentally mroe reliable way to work towards transportation.

 

P.S. It might be that the radiation feature is only a part of some mods. In the vanilla mod you so rarely if ever get a vehicle that I guess I never had the chance to go into the debug zone and just assumed it contained radiation. In any case, one look at most of the cars in chernarus tell you that something very bad happened, and it looks like it happened a long while ago.

[FlimFlamm 509]

I feel that vehicle modification this extensive isn't necessary for vanilla DayZ, doesn't really fit the theme as others have mentioned.

 

I wouldn't complain if they did decide to go this far, however it would work far better as part of a Mad Max 2 style mod on a larger desert map with a bigger focus on vehicles and fights over fuel sources like oil wells and crashed tanker trucks. 

 

Rocket said he wants to give us the tools to do what we want and to create that so called emergent gameplay that they so often allude to. This kind of system is exactly how to do that, even if this approach resembles something akin to road warrior or mad max.

 

Would the hit to authenticity really be a a big deal given the possibilites and gameplay that would be available as a result of a modular constructable system?

[FlimFlamm 509]

I can very easily see the future of vanilla DayZ where modders are forced to make all kinds of cool additions to the game to keep the playerbase happy. Vehicles were too hard to get in the mod as people always hoarded them, and cranking up the spawn numbers wrecked their relative value and made things a free for all. A prevailing feature of the most popular mods was modified access to, and increased diversity of, vehicles. Some mods made them purchasable from traders for in game currency, and some made them constructable.

 

The fact is that the vanilla dayz mod declined in popularity and gave way to improvements from the mods. Servers either jack their vehicle numbers or install a mod which improves the system. Don't believe me? Look at this list of DayZ servers by rank http://www.gametracker.com/search/dayzmod/ . They are all epoch and overpoch and other heavy duty mods except for one or two vanilla servers that have millions of vehicles.

 

Why would the DayZ dev team not incorporate something that they have absolute proof will drastically increase the playability and longevity of DayZ?

 

Why would they adhere to a model they they know has gameplay issues?

Edited April 16, 2015 by FlimFlamm

[B4GEL 175]

Rocket said he wants to give us the tools to do what we want and to create that so called emergent gameplay that they so often allude to. This kind of system is exactly how to do that, even if this approach resembles something akin to road warrior or mad max.

 

Would the hit to authenticity really be a a big deal given the possibilites and gameplay that would be available as a result of a modular constructable system?

More depth and complexity is always a good thing in my opinion, it's really just a matter of whether it's worth the development time.

The vehicle parts they've shown so far give the impression that vehicle repair will already be pretty complex but I don't feel that vehicles will be a big enough part of the vanilla game to warrant modularity at this level.

[FlimFlamm 509]

Vehicles need to be there, elsewise no matter how in depth everything else becomes, the hassle of transportation and the teamplay that comes with it will force people onto mods that adress the limitations of only having 10-20 prefab vehicles available.

 

The more modular everything becomes, the more dynamic the game will be and we will see more 'emergent' game play as a result.

 

Developers should be asking themselves "what is the best we can do" rather than "what should we focus on, and leave to the wayside because it is easier that way"...

[Caboose187 (DayZ) 3036]

I don't think you understand the type of game DayZ is. As for the mod, the player base that stayed with it was the same player base that started with it. The SA is going to resemble the vanilla mod.

[FlimFlamm 509]

I don't think you understand the type of game DayZ is. As for the mod, the player base that stayed with it was the same player base that started with it. The SA is going to resemble the vanilla mod.

 

But the only popular servers are ones with thousands of vehicles or modded servers where you can either construct or purchase them so that they are not super rare luck only based commodities.

 

I understand very well what they want DayZ to be and I was there for the vanilla mod in the early days.

 

There is not point however in making it exactly like the vanilla mod in terms of end game because we have had many years to  figure out what was missing. Turns out it was more reliable access to vehicles and base-building.

[Bab 20]

In all honesty, I find this to be a great idea. Modular vehicles, even craftable ones, would be a great addition into giving a building side to DayZ. After all, they gave me duct tape, they gave me an ak, I don't see why I shouldn't be able to duct tape that to the side mirrors of my V3S! Even making a makeshift skateboard out of 4 wheels and a piece of plywood isn't that big a deal. Sure, it won't be a high performance vehicle, but it'll roll me down the hill, haul my dead friends' body, or even carry my extra loot.

The problems the suggestion faces lie inside different aspects of the game: Mostly the engine, and the way it deals with physics. You propose a sort of a "building blocks" way of building the vehicles. The character could push, pull, move parts around using his strength, "apply welding" to pieces of metal and see them soldered, salvage wheels from trucks and have these linked to a makeshift chassis for making a sort of chariot.

 

 That would mean the parts would need to have physical characteristics : Weight and materiality, density, shape, burnability...etc. Now I can't stress enough how difficult the presence of these aspects is to incorporate inside the game. That means adding realistic gravity, and ragdoll physics, something the dayz engine doesn't yet seems to be very keen on doing well.That's because dayz applies well made physics to a very restricted number of items, mostly, bullets, and to some extent, trucks. Basically, right now, if you put a can of soda on a hillside, it won't roll down, and standing beneath a falling tree won't kill you. Making a chariot would mean asking the engine to calculate it's overall weight, then to perpetually challenge it's construction (can this chariot, that was built with this and that, which have those and these characteristics, do that action ?).

The problem with the way you propose these to be built is in the engine itself, it handles entities, which are relative and aren't linked to each other in terms of materiality.

Look at the game Besiege, it's very similar to what you'd propose.

Now even though a full physics engine overhaul doesn't seem to be in the making, I could see the devs implementing a few makeshift vehicles using the same kind of crafting the game already proposes, but that would mean a fixed amount of dev decided vehicles would be put in the game, for which they would have to make the models, the entities, the crafting recipes... etc etc, basically, the work they do now on other objects. The same way a splint is made from combining "rags" and "sticks", you could make a skateboard from combining the "skateboard wheels", "skateboard trucks" and "plywood" together, and bam, you'd get a pristine skateboard. That wouldn't account for the materiality of the plywood used, wether it was outside in the rain, wether the trucks are rusty, basically, it would be simpler for the devs to implement. BUT that would mean making a whopping of 3D models, sounds, lootabilty etc for different little parts, that would have very specific functions. So generating lot of work, and using a lot of dev ressources, something the devs already seem to be lacking in.

 

Your suggestion is good, and i'm also hopeful that we'll see it in the future but... you know.

[therandomredstone 432]

Something like this will just add a little somethin' to DayZ.

 

Imagine, heading west on the road from Stary, and you see a little improvised car carrying four 12 year old bandits..

 

 

 

ahh good ol' DayZ.

[Bab 20]

Something like this will just add a little somethin' to DayZ.

 

Imagine, heading west on the road from Stary, and you see a little improvised car carrying four 12 year old bandits..

 

 

 

ahh good ol' DayZ.

 

 

Oh this, just for this this should be implemented, there's so much fun to be had!

 

[FlimFlamm 509]

In all honesty, I find this to be a great idea. Modular vehicles, even craftable ones, would be a great addition into giving a building side to DayZ. After all, they gave me duct tape, they gave me an ak, I don't see why I shouldn't be able to duct tape that to the side mirrors of my V3S! Even making a makeshift skateboard out of 4 wheels and a piece of plywood isn't that big a deal. Sure, it won't be a high performance vehicle, but it'll roll me down the hill, haul my dead friends' body, or even carry my extra loot.

The problems the suggestion faces lie inside different aspects of the game: Mostly the engine, and the way it deals with physics. You propose a sort of a "building blocks" way of building the vehicles. The character could push, pull, move parts around using his strength, "apply welding" to pieces of metal and see them soldered, salvage wheels from trucks and have these linked to a makeshift chassis for making a sort of chariot.

 

 That would mean the parts would need to have physical characteristics : Weight and materiality, density, shape, burnability...etc. Now I can't stress enough how difficult the presence of these aspects is to incorporate inside the game. That means adding realistic gravity, and ragdoll physics, something the dayz engine doesn't yet seems to be very keen on doing well.That's because dayz applies well made physics to a very restricted number of items, mostly, bullets, and to some extent, trucks. Basically, right now, if you put a can of soda on a hillside, it won't roll down, and standing beneath a falling tree won't kill you. Making a chariot would mean asking the engine to calculate it's overall weight, then to perpetually challenge it's construction (can this chariot, that was built with this and that, which have those and these characteristics, do that action ?).

The problem with the way you propose these to be built is in the engine itself, it handles entities, which are relative and aren't linked to each other in terms of materiality.

Look at the game Besiege, it's very similar to what you'd propose.

Now even though a full physics engine overhaul doesn't seem to be in the making, I could see the devs implementing a few makeshift vehicles using the same kind of crafting the game already proposes, but that would mean a fixed amount of dev decided vehicles would be put in the game, for which they would have to make the models, the entities, the crafting recipes... etc etc, basically, the work they do now on other objects. The same way a splint is made from combining "rags" and "sticks", you could make a skateboard from combining the "skateboard wheels", "skateboard trucks" and "plywood" together, and bam, you'd get a pristine skateboard. That wouldn't account for the materiality of the plywood used, wether it was outside in the rain, wether the trucks are rusty, basically, it would be simpler for the devs to implement. BUT that would mean making a whopping of 3D models, sounds, lootabilty etc for different little parts, that would have very specific functions. So generating lot of work, and using a lot of dev ressources, something the devs already seem to be lacking in.

 

Your suggestion is good, and i'm also hopeful that we'll see it in the future but... you know.

 

I frequently daydream about future games and how the physycs simulators will be able to do just about anything. For now however I do realize that the physics engine is limited, and so too is the time of the devs.

 

Regarding chassis construction, the way I envision it players will need scrap metal and required tools like a drill or a welder in order to get a crafting option to make a chassis. I propose that only 3 variations of chassis be available, small mid and large, and these variable sizes will repsesent the spectrum of different sized vehicles that can be constructed. The vehicle holds itself together superficially, and while each component can take individual damage, when they break they the models for that part simply go into a default looking 'wrecked state' rather than having advanced structural integrity be simulated.

 

Regarding modeling and coding, one of the potential unexpected benefits to this system is that in terms of modeling, animations, coding, and sounds, a modular vehicle system can become a way to implement many variations of vehicles and get away with doing less work to do it. All of the basic modular parts will share models and essentially fit like lego blocks onto the chassis when it comes to modeling the completed variations.

 

I have no understanding of the fusion engine and so I cannot be sure that this is the case, but my general knowledge of programming makes me feel that this is the case.

 

They are going to be modeling about a dozen additional prefab land vehicles or so. Instead I would have them model fewer prefab land vehicles to make development room for some modular ones.

Edited April 19, 2015 by FlimFlamm